Myrn and the Pfantasians watched in varying degrees of satisfaction as the spinning bubble carried the little lieutenant out over the lake and, at a flick of the Apprentice Wizard’s right index finger, burst with a pleasant musical chime. The screaming Witchserver dropped headfirst into the cold water, making a most pleasing splash.
The Witchserver policeman uttered a terrified gurgle as he popped like a cork to the surface. His three henchmen were trying to clamber ashore, but their hands and arms were coated with a thick, fragrant lather and, unable to get a grip on the wet dock planks, they slid back farther and farther downstream with each try.
“I’ll clap you in irons for this, you...you...!” the lieutenant cursed most foully, thrashing his arms to remain afloat and stirring up a good lather all about him in the water.
“Have you learned nothing at all from this?” called Myrn. “Your mouth certainly could use a good soaping, too!”
A strong along-shore current carried the four Witchservers a quarter mile down the shore. In three or four breaths they were mere specks, far out on the lake, moving with the flow toward lower Bloody Brook.
Listeners on Pfantas’s Main Level heard all four Witch-servers wasting breath in futile cursing and terrified sobbing. They disappeared around the bend in the shore.
(Where they came ashore, Pfantasians never knew or cared. Four Undines, playing happily in their waterfall, saw them come hurtling over the brink, to be swept around the pool onto a narrow pebble beach between two great rocks, where they managed to scramble ashore. By that time they were much too exhausted to say a word, or even clamber up the canyon wall to freedom.)
“Now,” said Myrn, dusting her hands together—a mannerism very similar to one of Augurian’s—and smiling at a young man in the forefront of the crowd, “is there anyone else who needs a good scrubbing up around here?”
“All the other Witchservers went off to Coventown with a prisoner, ma’am. All of us could use a good bath, if it comes to that,” the young man commented, smiling in return. “Bathing is—has been—forbidden by law as a waste of valuable time and resources here in Pfantas for some years.”
“I can see—and smell!” said the pretty Water Adept, wrinkling her nose. “Well, I’ll do something about that. But first, I need some information.”
“You can ask me, I guess. If I don’t know, I’ll try to find out for you,” said the other. “My name is Featherstone.”
“I’m Myrn Manstar, and I’m Apprentice Water Adept to Augurian of Waterand,” replied Myrn, proudly. “Very pleased to meet you, Master Featherstone!”
“Very adept with soap and water, too, I’d say,” chuckled Featherstone. “As it happens, ma’am, you are the second Wizard I’ve met this week.”
“Ah, that would be my Douglas!” cried Myrn, seating herself in relief on a bench in front of the now-empty Onstabula. “Tell me of him! I’m here looking for him.”
Featherstone quickly told of his two meetings with the Journeyman Fire Wizard. The Pfantasians about them listened in surprise, for this was news to them, too.
“Since then I’ve been working odd jobs, enough to put some food in my mouth, at any rate,” said the leather merchant’s son, “and talking quietly to people, especially my father’s friends. We’d give anything to break away from Emaldar’s thralldom, but we don’t know how to go about it.”
“Well, Douglas—and I—will help in that regard, never fear. And I’m about to make a great start by giving this place a thorough cleaning, believe me! Such a stench!”
Featherstone sighed. “It’s one of the ways Emaldar keeps us cowed,” he told her. “No washing, no cleaning, no dusting, nothing like that! A person’s pride is easily smashed when he feels grungy and greasy all the time and can’t even put on a clean shirt or shave his beard nor even carry a bit of soap without getting slapped in jail.”
“First things first, then,” said Myrn, sympathetically. She stood in the middle of Main Level and rolled her sleeves above her elbows. “Pfantas is about to take a bath, top to bottom, round and round!”
The spell she wove was not spectacular, nor did it call for much in the way of incantations or mysterious passes. And yet, in less than a quarter minute the overcasting smog, redolent of rotten fruit, kitty piddling, rancid cooking grease, and all manner of other nasty things, began to boil and roil above the town.
Its color quickly changed from brown-yellow to light blue-gray and then to pure white as the midmorning sun shone on it. It began to snow—but the dainty snow-drops were soap flakes!
When everything—and everyone—was quite dusted white with the lacy flakes, a fresh-smelling mist descended, warm and clinging, swirled by a wind whipping around and around the cone-shaped hill, changing directions after every other circuit to trace back on itself, whirling and swirling the soap flakes into every nook and cranny of the town.
The wind moderated and a hot rain began to fall, pelting straight down, soaking everything, until all Pfantas—including the townspeople who had rushed outside to see what was happening—was soaped and sudsed and scrubbed by the rain, the wind, and the flakes that smelled like your own mother’s laundry, long ago at home.
The shower became a downpour. It rinsed the houses and streets, washed the straggly trees and the dispirited, yellow grass—and the filth-laden men, women, and children, as well.
Running rainwater charged through the gardens, the yards and the alleys, flushing away years of garbage, trash, dust and dried mud. It washed through the Pfantasians’ tangled, oily hair, through their clothing, leaving everyone sparkling bright and squeaky clean from topknots to toes. Even their boots were shined!
Pfantasians cheered and wept and laughed through it all. A new, warm wind buffeted them in playful fashion, drying their clothing and ruffling their hair as it dried their skin—and shined the few panes of glass left in their windows.
Chimneys, clogged with soot and sour ash, suddenly began to draw easily, and when the wind had stopped, the smoke of breakfast fires rose into the still air, straight as ruled lines, pausing only long enough to scent the whole town with pinewood smoke and the aromas of frying bacon and eggs, toast and coffee.
“It’s a beginning,” conceded Myrn, wringing the last of the soapy water out of her skirts. She examined her handiwork with satisfaction, especially young Featherstone, who looked entirely different. Now he had clean hair, a clean face, and a clean shirt. “You’ll have to keep it clean for yourselves. There’s a warehouse full of soap left over from the storm, over there, enough to last until you can get your own again.”
“Wonderfully splendid!” Featherstone shouted with glee and relief.
“There’re still lots of other problems to be tackled here, although most of them you can solve for yourselves. As for this Witch Emaldar, with your kind help, Douglas will surely see she does no more harm, here or anywhere.”
“Yes, well,” said Featherstone, “getting back to Douglas ... he came looking for his friend, Cribblon, but the Witchservers had already captured him. The Wizard set out three days ago to follow them to Coventown, to the Wicked Queen. No one’s seen or heard of him since. I’m beginning to fear for him.”
“No need,” said Myrn, stoutly. “Douglas doesn’t really need me to do his work. But perhaps I can make it easier. Besides, you can never have too much help from good friends.”
“You’ve already made it easier for him, I think,” said Featherstone. “Hello? Who’s this?”
“This is my good friend, Captain Pargeot,” introduced Myrn. The Seacaptain, seeing the spring cleaning of Pfantas from the next hillside, had rushed to town to see the results up close. The two men shook hands.
“The look and smell of this place have certainly improved,” observed Pargeot in considerable awe. “I saw it all from across the way. People were laughing and singing!”
“So they were,” said Myrn, pleased by his words despite her modesty.
“So very wonderful!” cried Pargeot. “Isn’t she absol
utely marvelous?” he asked Featherstone—and anyone else near enough to hear.
Most of the Pfantasians didn’t connect the cleansing of their city and themselves with the slim, black-haired Apprentice. They were too busy laughing and talking freely for the first time in years, and marveling at the conquest of the Witchservers, to ask how it all had happened.
“I’ll tell them,” declared Featherstone. “They will want to know whom to thank.”
“Let them think it was their own doing,” said Myrn. “I don’t need to be thanked. Just breathing newly fresh, clean air in Pfantas is reward enough, don’t you think?”
“So self-effacing! So modest!” raptured Pargeot, shaking his head in wonder. “What a great lady!”
“Pargeot, I wish you’d stow it!” growled Myrn in exasperation.
“If you say so, adorable Apprentice,” sighed the Westonguer.
“Back to business now!” interrupted Myrn. “Where do you think Douglas is, Master Featherstone?”
Said Featherstone, “He must be somewhere between here and Coventown. I’m sure he means to rescue the bellows mender, at the very least. He was most concerned about him when he left here.”
“And he needed to know where to find the Witch Emaldar, of course,” said Pargeot.
“Yes, that certainly is true,” replied the Pfantasian. “But I can’t tell you much more than that.”
“Will you guide us to Coventown?” asked Myrn.
“Well, there’s a big problem there. The Witch put a hex on us a long time ago. No one from Pfantas has ever been able to find Coventown, although we have a general idea where it must be. A number have tried, hoping to rescue the men and boys the Coven has enslaved. They never found the way!”
Myrn closed her eyes a moment, studying the strong hex she had already sensed about the town.
“A complex confusion spell, and one, unfortunately, that’s beyond easy breaking,” sighed Myrn. “I can feel its outlines but to do anything about it may take me days of trial-and-error experimenting. I just don’t have that much skill at demagicking.”
They sat on the Onstabula bench in thoughtful silence. Pargeot at last snapped his fingers and cried, “The Witchservers are able to find Coventown. They took the captive Cribblon there, didn’t they?”
“That’s so,” said Myrn. “How does that help us?”
“If we allow ourselves to be captured by them, they’ll drag us off to the Witch, just as they did the man Cribblon! It seems to me they would do just that, under the circumstances.”
“Good thinking!” approved the Apprentice Wizard. “But we don’t have any Witchservers left.”
“We’ll have some, shortly,” said Featherstone. “The Witch will send her Witchservers back, after they’ve delivered the bellows mender to her. Their departure left the Witchserver constabulary down to just the four you popped in the lake.”
“We’ll have to await their return, then,” decided Myrn. “No use wandering about in the mountains looking for the Coven and mayhap getting lost. While we wait, I’ll try to dismantle the Witch’s hex. If the Witchservers don’t arrive first, perhaps Featherstone can guide us to Coven.”
“Wise plan,” enthused Pargeot. “We’d waste that much time just getting lost, anyway.”
Featherstone said, “You can perhaps give us advice on how to prepare for the Witchservers’ return. We must organize a defense against their attempt to recapture Pfantas.”
“That’s the spirit!” cried Myrn. “You can do it, if you are firm in your purpose. You’ll have surprise on your side, it’s certain.”
“We allowed this to happen to ourselves—through cowardice and selfishness—once. Once is more than enough,” declared the Pfantasian. “I’m going to call together a town council. Most of the old Council are dead or enslaved, but there must be many here who will take their places.”
“I’ll stay right here, a pleasant spot now that the sun’s come out,” declared Myrn. “I need some peace and quiet to work on the hex.”
Taking her hint, both men went separate ways. Featherstone dived into the crowd of townspeople who were still happily discussing the morning’s events, talking of a town meeting.
Pargeot, with no specific task in mind, walked carefully down the still-soapy stairs to the waterfront, drawn by professional curiosity, to examine the various boats, barges, canoes, rafts, and lake craft moored there.
The lake sailors were already industriously scrubbing years of grime and grease from their vessels, laughing and singing as they worked.
“We’ve been tied up here for longer than I care to remember,” said one to Pargeot. “Emaldar—blast her green eyes!—forbade us going up or down or across the lake without her permission, which she sold very dearly. Few ever got to go, unless it was on her own nasty errands.”
“How did you make a living?” wondered the Westonguer.
“Fishing, mostly. That was allowed, but it tends to make any boat dirty and smelly, which pleased the Witchservers. They liked us to be filthy.”
“I’ll lend you a hand,” volunteered Pargeot, and shortly he was swabbing decks and sweeping out cabins, while learning the words to a cheerfully off-color chanty long current among the sailors on Pfantas Lake. Looking up from his work some time later, Pargeot saw a very strange sight.
A puff of pink smoke on the dock swirled about like a tiny tornado, then coalesced into the figures of two men. The rivermen paused in their cleaning, polishing, and scrubbing to stare, startled by the sudden appearance of strangers. They reached for long-hidden knives and cudgels, determined to defend their regained freedom.
“Avast! I know that man!” cried Pargeot. He hopped ashore, telling the men to put up their weapons, and ran to meet Caspar Marlin.
Caspar, an old friend, was accompanied by a yellow-skinned child overdressed in stiffly swishing, carnelian-brocaded silk robes that swept the wooden dock about his tiny feet. The child wore a black, flat-topped hat with a wide, shiny brim all about, tilted down in back and up in front.
“Ahoy!” called Caspar, sighting the Westonguer. “Well met, young Pargeot! How come ye here?”
“I was about to ask the same of you, Caspar,” said Pargeot, pumping his hand. Caspar introduced the child as Wong Tscha San, who bowed deeply, and Pargeot realized with something of a shock that Caspar’s companion was not a child, after all, but a diminutive, very ancient Choinese gentleman with brightly twinkling eyes and a modest smile.
“I’m here as escort to Lady Myrn Manstar, the Apprentice Water Adept,” Pargeot began to explain.
“Ah, the beautiful Myrn!” exclaimed Caspar. “I told you of her, Wong, didn’t I? Fiancée of the Wizard Douglas Brightglade?”
“Many times, Caspar,” chuckled the Magician from Choin. “I am pleased to meet you, Captain. I look forward to meeting both the Water Wizard’s comely Apprentice and her intended bridegroom, also.”
“Wong is a Wizard, too,” explained Caspar. “We also came to help Douglas put down this Witch, Emaldar ... if he needs any help.”
“I can’t tell yet whether Douglas is being successful or not,” Pargeot told them, and as they climbed the stairs to Main Level he related their adventures and what he knew of Douglas’s Journeying.
They found Myrn still seated on the bench in front of the building marked Onstabula, speaking to a very scruffy teenaged boy in torn, dirty, and ill-fitting clothes. He looked very much out of place in newly scrubbed Pfantas.
When she saw Caspar she excused herself and flung herself into the old Seaman’s arms, shouting his name joyfully.
“I can’t think of anyone short of Flarman and Augurian I’d rather have with us at this juncture,” she told him after the kissing and hugging was satisfactorily completed. “We’ve all sorts of problems and troubles.”
“Of course,” said Caspar. “Where Wizards are, there is almost always trouble for someone. I’ve brought more assistance, too. Meet Magician Wong Tscha San of Choin, my dear.”
Caspar beg
an to tell how they came to be there, but Myrn held up her hand in apology. Turning to the waiting youth, she said, “Now, Willow, run back and keep a close eye on the Witchservers, please. Let us know where they are and how fast they approach.”
The ragamuffin saluted jauntily, gave the others a broad grin and a wink, and dashed off around the level.
“There’s a small band of young Pfantas rebels hiding in the pine forests,” explained Myrn. “Willow is their leader and he came to warn Featherstone of the approach of a party of Witchservers—they are the willing servants of Emaldar, you must understand—a half-day’s march off, coming toward us from Coventown where the witches have their stronghold.”
“What’s to be done?” asked Pargeot.
“Coming straight on, marching all night, they can’t be here until tomorrow morning at the earliest, Willow says. We shall wait for them and persuade them to take us to Coventown. The way is hidden by a Witch’s hex of confusing. Unless, Sir Magician,” she turned to Wong, “you can wipe out the spell. It’s beyond me.”
“I understand,” said Wong, thoughtfully. “Let me see...”
He sat upright on the Onstabula bench with his eyes closed, humming softly to himself for a long moment. Then he frowned and looked once more at Myrn.
He said, “It is not a terribly difficult spell to weave, nor to unravel, even for my poor skill. However, I must warn that when one tampers with such a spelling, the magicker responsible will at once become aware of it. Would you wish to warn this Witch of our presence before it is absolutely necessary?”
“I hadn’t even thought of that!” exclaimed Myrn, making a wry face. “We’d be better advised to wait for the Witchservers to come to us and capture them. They can be made to show us the way, I should think.”
“I see no problem with that plan,” agreed the Choinese. “It will be no great problem to secure the cooperation of these poor, deluded men. Their allegiance surely cannot be overly strong.”
Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) Page 22
